Chris, I think you went a little too far on the adds here. I know you have to keep this place funded but the layout has gone to hell. The load times have quadroupled and this nice little menu on the left cuts down substantially on viewing on smaller resolution screens.

wait, we're on our 8th thing and we still haven't even gotten to the title bar of the forum we're on? next is a little sponsor add tucked in the top of the forum

The left menu for "easier navigation" no doubt features a bunch of things
-navigation menu (which is already built into two toolbars. We don't really need it)-links disguising Google Add (#3)
-profile (which is already built into two toolbars. We don't really need it)-featured product add box-sponsors disguising Google Add (#4)

If we need 8 different adds PER page in order to fund this place than fine but can't we use a layout for them that doesn't keep shifting forum content down and to the right? I only have so much screen real estate. Also, The load time is getting unbearable for navigating. So is scrolling through our literally 12" long header to get to the page you just called up.

If nothing else, can we condense the site's navigation menus at least to free up some space? If advertising space is so needed, than I would rather sacrifice 4x different ways to get to the gallery to be able to actually see the topics on the page I just called up.

It's not all about the adds specifically. Having a 140 pixel tall banner and multiple navigation bars is really crowding when you have this many adds.

I'm not very good at photoshop or anything but I took a try at making that gap smaller. I did not remove ANY adds. The only thing really missing is the reply button which I would prefer on the bottom anyway. You can see my gap is a lot smaller:

It's not all about the adds specifically. Having a 140 pixel tall banner and multiple navigation bars is really crowding when you have this many adds.

I'm not very good at photoshop or anything but I took a try at making that gap smaller. I did not remove ANY adds. The only thing really missing is the reply button which I would prefer on the bottom anyway. You can see my gap is a lot smaller:

Hey guys, keep voicing your concerns. Nobody likes change and very few like the thought of more ads on the site. There are some new decision-makers involved here and I am no longer the final authority on matters like this. Don't worry, this doesn't mean everything else is changing too. The site rules and spirit still remain the same. The Moderators are still the same, though we'll likely be adding a few more. We simply will have "new" people making decisions on certain things like layout and ad placement. I would direct concerns about this type of stuff to "dascrow" (Dan).